Re: Converting an ext3 filesystem to ext4

On Saturday 03 July 2010 17:14 in comp.os.linux.misc, somebody
identifying as Kenny McCormack wrote...

In article <17qdnZ7dk6QP3LLR4p2dnAA@xxxxxxxxxxxx>,
John Reiser <jreiserfl@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

If you cannot afford to buy or borrow such an "extra" drive,
then you certainly cannot afford to scribble all your data.
Asking questions like you did strongly suggests a non-ignorable
probability that you *WILL* scribble *ALL* your data.

It is attitudes and posts like this that show why MS is beating Linux
in most markets.

Absolute hogwash, and echoing a number of known C.O.L.A. Wintrolls.

Not all GNU/Linux distributors are commercial entities, and those that
are had to compete with a virtual, if not an absolute monopoly on the
x86 architecture. That means that in order for a commercial GNU/Linux
distribution to get installed, it had to be installed on a machine that
had Windows on it, and for many users, given Microsoft's way of
conditioning the user and locking them into a single vendor, said
machine could even still have Windows on it even after GNU/Linux was
installed - as a dualboot configuration.

The above is merely a consequence of a market economy where a monopoly
exists, and considering a 5 to 7% market share on the x86 desktop for
GNU/Linux - and not 1% as the Wintrolls claim - after Microsoft's
monopoly was already in place, I'd say that GNU/Linux has done very
well for itself. The estimated market share on servers - both x86 and
other architectures - even lies around 60%, which is even more
astonishing, given that in that market segment, GNU/Linux had to go up
against proprietary UNIX systems. It also shows the difference in
chances for GNU/Linux between a market with a monopoly and a market
without a monopoly - Microsoft has never had a stronghold of the server
market segment.

John Reiser's reply up above may have been a bit terse, but it was a
correct assessment, and I doubt that what he writes on Usenet would
have any influence on "market shares".

NTFS comes with a simple utility that works that converts
FAT to NTFS (in place). Linux would do well to emulate that.

You are also neglecting to mention that the FAT to NTFS converter only
converts "in place" for any non-system partitions or partitions that
are actively in use.

I have in a past now fortunately long gone used NT 4.0, and it used
MS-DOS to install the base system off the CD onto a FAT 16 filesystem -
NT 4.0 did not support vfat/FAT32 yet - and then when it rebooted from
the hard disk, it would first stay in the equivalent of a boot-up
filesystem repair console on GNU/Linux - but without the
interactivity - while it was converting the "sea drive" into NTFS. And
then, upon finishing the conversion, it would continue booting into the
GUI and present you with a fresh NTFS filesystem... with read, write
and execute permission and ownership for *every* user account.

For those with little understanding of filesystems, ext4 may appear to
be "just another upgrade" to ext3, the way ext3 was just ext2 with
journaling. However, there are far more differences between ext4 and
ext3 than there are between FAT and NTFS. At least, with the solution
presented to the OP, he can choose from either a delayed conversion
while using the filesystem in realtime, or a fast conversion by making
a backup to an ext4 filesystem, reformatting the original ext3 to ext4
and then restoring the backup.

--
*Aragorn*
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)
.

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